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Omnicrom posted:To quote someone on a discord I frequent AGES ago about exactly this game: "Any argument that leads to the player of a videogame being the real monster leads to the developer being the real monster first". If we're playing the blame game the buck stops with the person who created the story where you play through the experience of committing a war crime. If we are going to use that yardstick, is Jonathan Swift the real monster of 'A modest proposal?' I think it is more worthwhile to look at what Spec Ops: The Line wanted to be, ie an uncomfortable satire about how entertaining violence is, and discuss how it succeeded or failed and what trpgs can draw from that.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:28
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Halloween Jack posted:I soured on Fallout's karma system when I realized that Fallout 2 would award me Good Boy Points for killing prostitutes with a flamethrower while they frantically try to penetrate my power armor with their switchblades. Huh. That’s strange. I actually wonder if that’s a bug caused by someone cloning the Miss Kitty’s Prostitutes from Angela Bishop, the pretty terrible mob boss daughter.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:47
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As far as I know/remember, they're just coded as Bad Guys, so you get +5 Karma for killing them and they'll go aggro on you if you try to do something nice for the community, like kill a pimp.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:49
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Yeah, that’s why I’m guessing they’re a copy-paste bug, since they’re on the evil_npc list despite there being multiple other prostitutes who, to my best knowledge, aren’t—even some other Miss Kitty’s girls. Not that the Fallout 2 Karma system is all that great: ultimately it’s a single numerical score that tries to encapsulate your moral reputation, which is always going to be reductive.
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Jul 11, 2023 22:13
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Also do not talk about the mother of my child that way
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Jul 11, 2023 22:20
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Miss Kitty being the name of the madam amuses me that somebody at Interplay "What do the kids like? Gunsmoke!"
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Jul 11, 2023 23:04
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50s references were kind of Fallout 1 and 2s thing.
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Jul 11, 2023 23:19
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https://twitter.com/GOGcom/status/1678448528169869317?s=20
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Jul 11, 2023 23:41
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Dawgstar posted:Miss Kitty being the name of the madam amuses me that somebody at Interplay "What do the kids like? Gunsmoke!" Gunsmoke had an extremely long 20-season run, with the final season airing in 1975. It’d probably have been in reruns throughout the late 70s, 80s, and even 90s. In any case, Fallout 2 specifically was full of basically any pop-culture reference someone on the Fallout 2 team thought was funny.
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Jul 11, 2023 23:44
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I think Spec Ops: The Line's issue is that it wasn't just about one thing. The story of the game itself was about the character's descent into cruelty from a series of small "greater good" steps and some big turning points, but it was intentionally advertised as a straight-up ooo-rah America yay shooter and there were loading screens and other elements to try and get the player thinking about how they engage with that. So the base game had a definite goal of a character becoming a monster, the meta around it was trying to prompt further examination/discussion of the genre and the player without a definite answer, and then on top of that you had the developer going "yes that is exactly what I intended I am a genius" to anything that was put forward. Reading text as subtext or context in a game that was deliberately blurring the lines. When those get mixed up (which is not a failure on the part of the player, this isn't some "learn to read lol" situation) it's not surprising people react so severely.
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Jul 12, 2023 01:21
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LatwPIAT posted:Yeah, that’s why I’m guessing they’re a copy-paste bug, since they’re on the evil_npc list despite there being multiple other prostitutes who, to my best knowledge, aren’t—even some other Miss Kitty’s girls.
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Jul 12, 2023 02:16
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I guess to go full circle back to trad games and veterans, I'd be interested in veterans takes on Spec Op. From my angle, it sounds some what similar to IRL veteran takes I've heard (eg, "I was young and dumb and bought into ooh rah patriotism adventure but it was alternating boring and traumatizing.) Granted they seem to only key into the traumatizing aspect, and I have no military experience myself, but it seems to be a video game version of that common storyline.
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Jul 12, 2023 02:16
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PharmerBoy posted:I guess to go full circle back to trad games and veterans, I'd be interested in veterans takes on Spec Op. As I said, I am ex-combat arms, and I did see horrific poo poo in real life, and when the WP scene happened in Spec Ops. I shut off the game and got a refund.
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Jul 12, 2023 02:29
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Leperflesh posted:To pull this back to trad gaming, I think games like Disco Elysium are good models for what RPGs can do with Serious Morality Questions where you exist in a gray area and even in pivotal moments, making a "bad guy" choice doesn't mean you're permanently locked into a maximum evil role or making the "good guy" choice means you're a paragon of angelic Good. Those kinds of choices and outcomes are not interesting to me. I've been listening to a Delta Green AP* and one of the big moments in a recent session was the group realizing that they would have to break the law in order to accomplish their objective. Now, it's Cthulhu/Delta Green, so it's somewhat easy to make that rationalization as a player, even if the character has to suffer from the mental trauma of justifying the commission of crimes, and then actually doing it, but in the vein of your post, I think that's how create an interesting "evil" path: give the players a reason to want to do harm, for their own reasons and agendas. Or to bring it back to Disco Elysium - that game has drugs, but (IIRC) there's no in-game, rules-based compulsion to become addicted to the drugs. They're almost all upside when you take them... and then you realize that that's the compulsion. ___ * Role Playing Public Radio is going through the Impossible Landscapes campaign - strong recommend from me if you're into that
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Jul 12, 2023 06:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've been listening to a Delta Green AP* and one of the big moments in a recent session was the group realizing that they would have to break the law in order to accomplish their objective. I was playtesting a Delta Green adventure* and I broke it horribly because as a new player my first instinct when confronted with something obviously wrong was "slap the cuffs on and sort this out in the interview room in the police station" instead of "shoot the loving ghouls." It was hilarious, according to the long time GM, just how I completely obliterated the structure by being naive enough to go "well I'm a cop I'm gonna do a cop thing." *I don't think it's out yet, if someone reads this in a year or so it's a John Tynes mission in Druid Hills, Atlanta.
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Jul 12, 2023 07:01
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Arivia posted:It was hilarious, according to the long time GM, just how I completely obliterated the structure by being naive enough to go "well I'm a cop I'm gonna do a cop thing." Wait so did you open fire at the first provocation or didn't you
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Jul 12, 2023 07:19
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Arivia posted:*I don't think it's out yet, if someone reads this in a year or so it's a John Tynes mission in Druid Hills, Atlanta. How broken is the basic structure if "PC does their in-game job" short circuits the plot?
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Jul 12, 2023 07:36
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quote:Baldur’s Gate 3 leaps up Steam charts after bear sex reveal https://www.pcgamesn.com/baldurs-gate-3/bear maybe people are all just freaks
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Jul 12, 2023 09:00
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mllaneza posted:How broken is the basic structure if "PC does their in-game job" short circuits the plot?
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Jul 12, 2023 09:01
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Bottom Liner posted:https://www.pcgamesn.com/baldurs-gate-3/bear They also showed all the new races, subraces, classes, subclasses, spells, and a new NPC. But that's a less clickable headline.
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Jul 12, 2023 10:47
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mllaneza posted:How broken is the basic structure if "PC does their in-game job" short circuits the plot? That’s what playtesting is for! The GM and I talked it through and suggested a bunch of tweaks and easy advice to make the mission much more resilient. I don’t know Tynes but unless he throws all our playtesting feedback in the trash it’ll be fine when it’s released. e: and no I didn’t open fire. I was playing a U.S. Marshal so I was being a detective. I wanted to get them in separate interrogation rooms to compare stories.
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Jul 12, 2023 10:49
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King of Solomon posted:I don't think even people gushing about it back when it first came out thought it was anything special mechanically. It was all about the story. The entire point is that it's presented and plays like a perfectly functional example of the genre it's satirising, I feel. There's lots of ways to do parody games but they usually gotta involve being at least decently functional on the mechanical side of things. (Reminded of Cruelty Squad there; the game looks incredibly poo poo definitely on purpose but the mechanics are actually solid) I feel like people really overthink Spec Ops, and remember that interview was a single developer's POV of what was clearly a collaborative project. One critic who liked it said they thought they were supposed to identify with the NPC companions who become gradually more alienated from the player character. Splicer posted:90% of horror breaks if you do sensible things. Nope is a fun one where for the most part people aren't stupid for no reason- some characters do some impulsive or crazy things, but in at least implied context of their own experiences and situation, and the horror comes from dealing with something they don't understand and their assumptions being very wrong. Kind of a Jordan Peele thing, from what I've heard.
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Jul 12, 2023 11:09
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Bottom Liner posted:maybe people are all just freaks SATG when sex is referenced in any game: 
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Jul 12, 2023 11:19
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Bruceski posted:I think Spec Ops: The Line's issue is that it wasn't just about one thing. The story of the game itself was about the character's descent into cruelty from a series of small "greater good" steps and some big turning points, but it was intentionally advertised as a straight-up ooo-rah America yay shooter and there were loading screens and other elements to try and get the player thinking about how they engage with that. So the base game had a definite goal of a character becoming a monster, the meta around it was trying to prompt further examination/discussion of the genre and the player without a definite answer, and then on top of that you had the developer going "yes that is exactly what I intended I am a genius" to anything that was put forward. Doesn't help that there's this other military action franchise called Metal Gear Solid that managed to be infinitely more interesting than Spec OPs ever could, marrying aspects of having the player question their own enjoyment of violent video games, antiwar/weapons proliferations philosophy, deceptive marketing and all of that other stuff. And more. And poop and pee jokes, sure, but I still think it's way more interesting than anything Spec Ops managed to do. Hell, they even did the deceptive advertising thing in MGS2 where they showed nothing but footage of Solid Snake, the protagonist and then it turned out most of the game was played by a guy with zero real-world experience that just does whatever he's told without thinking about why he's doing it and has hundreds of hours on VR simulations, a commentary on Kojima's irritation that the VR missions pack, a release designed to meet demand for more Metal Gear Solid that was just a bunch of story-free and context free missions/levels sold enormously well, far more than expected, leading him to worry that maybe people were playing these anti-war, anti-weapons proliferation games for the bang bang pows and not really absorbing much. Hell I'm surprised nobody brought up the Brenda Romero game Train, a literal board game where you're told via little cards to load meeples onto trains and you're literally placing the meeples in trains and choosing optimal routes and at the end of the game you're told you're literally a Nazi logistics officer, something that should've been obvious a turn or two in since the traincars are not passenger ones:  My god, how could I have known this wasn't a fun little train station management game???? The point was to make people think about what they're actually doing in the game and the twist is not that surprising, its more how many red flags you'll ignore if you're having fun (the answer from its touring as a setpiece at conventions was "all of them" if anyone is curious, which uh, is quite interesting). I dunno, it just felt that in 2013, the "think about what you're actually doing, man!" stuff was fairly well tread ground and done in some genuinely impressive creative works. Most of them telegraphed this to the players and shrugged if they wanted to continue and generally were better received and didn't need to trick you. Shadow of the Colossus was an industry darling for like, five years! I get that the same industry producing interesting antiwar works was also producing "war loving rocks and you can fist bump your bro after you kill him, because you're both mercs and being a merc is awesome(Army of Two)" garbage.... Hell they're still doing stuff like that. Those Lord of the Rings games where you just do your own Sauron stuff, complete with terrorizing Orcs and torturing them and murdering them and gaslighting them and the game is quite explicit in telling you these things feel real human emotions, can have creative interests, ambitions for the future is kind of hosed, and John Ronald was already the kind of person who was utterly baffled and disturbed by a fan sending him a hand-engraved goblet with the One Ring poem on it because that's supposed to be like...an evil poem, so I can only imagine "oh we made a game where you make up your own army of orcs, terrorize and enslave them and then go on little wars with them!!!" would probably gently caress him up emotionally. There's a whole mechanic in leveling them up a bunch and then murdering them so you get better loot from their bodies. It's definitely not a commentary on jack loving poo poo, and the only thing it does that's true to Tolkien's vision is making sure that Shelob has the ability to turn into a hot goth chick that looks a lot like the porn actress Stoya, who would be born 13 years after Tolkien's death. Thankfully they made sure to get this vision of Shelob correct to the vision of Tolkien TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 15:01
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PharmerBoy posted:I guess to go full circle back to trad games and veterans, I'd be interested in veterans takes on Spec Op. I'm a combat veteran. I played the game through to the end, but I'd been warned/spoiled beforehand; if I hadn't been I am not sure that I would have. I didn't play it for a while after it came out, and once I started I continued because I wanted to see where it was going. I also played it through because it became clear that the main character is, in fact, dead and this is his decent into hell - and fantasies like that don't hit as hard. TheDiceMustRoll posted:My god, how could I have known this wasn't a fun little train station management game???? I really don't like games that surprise-condemn people for playing them. That's such an insulting "gotcha." "Look how smart I am, I fooled you!" Which, yeah, you did, good for you. Cessna fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 15:23
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Cessna posted:
I wasn't really saying it was good, just that stuff that like already existed. Train was 2009
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Jul 12, 2023 15:37
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I stopped playing Grand Theft Auto 5 directly after the scene where you torture some guy at the behest of some black-ops guy. I couldn't avoid it without ending my progress in the game, but it makes me leery to buy another GTA game for fear that I'll have to do it again in a sequel.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:44
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Doesn't help that there's this other military action franchise called Metal Gear Solid that managed to be infinitely more interesting than Spec OPs ever could, marrying aspects of having the player question their own enjoyment of violent video games, antiwar/weapons proliferations philosophy, deceptive marketing and all of that other stuff. And more. And poop and pee jokes, sure, but I still think it's way more interesting than anything Spec Ops managed to do. Hell, they even did the deceptive advertising thing in MGS2 where they showed nothing but footage of Solid Snake, the protagonist and then it turned out most of the game was played by a guy with zero real-world experience that just does whatever he's told without thinking about why he's doing it and has hundreds of hours on VR simulations, a commentary on Kojima's irritation that the VR missions pack, a release designed to meet demand for more Metal Gear Solid that was just a bunch of story-free and context free missions/levels sold enormously well, far more than expected, leading him to worry that maybe people were playing these anti-war, anti-weapons proliferation games for the bang bang pows and not really absorbing much. I don't think you played MGS2 because that's very much not what Raiden is. and Kojima's anti war stuff is really undermined because he( or someone on his core team) has a boner for military tech / design and also because he kept walking back the villainousness of characters like Big Boss* by making them the true but misguided heroes , despite running slave legions.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:54
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I thought Spec Ops: The Line was pretty stupid and mechanically bad, but I did beat it, which is not something you can even do in the games as a service model today.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:58
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Cannibal Smiley posted:I stopped playing Grand Theft Auto 5 directly after the scene where you torture some guy at the behest of some black-ops guy. I couldn't avoid it without ending my progress in the game, but it makes me leery to buy another GTA game for fear that I'll have to do it again in a sequel. That's about the time I tapped out too. I just sniped a random guy just so I didn't have to watch that.
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Jul 12, 2023 16:06
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that scene was so bad lmao. it was like they knew what "satire" was from reading Wikipedia and decided to put their first draft in the game
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Jul 12, 2023 16:07
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"Acceptable war crime" is on the same list as "when it's ok to use the n-word" and "perpetual motion machine" in terms of non-existent things that broke-brain white weirdos obsess over convoluting into existence. That Train game gotcha is just an awful twist. I've read about a horror movie that also tried to pull that "you're the real monster for consuming this media!" twist and it's always a juvenile copout. The viewer isn't the one creating that content with the object of making truckloads of money. As already observed, Hotline Miami did a great job contextualizing videogame and cartoon "entertainment violence." It managed to do the Itchy and Scratchy thing without becoming Itchy and Scratchy.
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Jul 12, 2023 16:21
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moths posted:"Acceptable war crime" is on the same list as "when it's ok to use the n-word" and "perpetual motion machine" in terms of non-existent things that broke-brain white weirdos obsess over convoluting into existence.
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Jul 12, 2023 16:25
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Hel posted:I don't think you played MGS2 because that's very much not what Raiden is. and Kojima's anti war stuff is really undermined because he( or someone on his core team) has a boner for military tech / design and also because he kept walking back the villainousness of characters like Big Boss* by making them the true but misguided heroes , despite running slave legions. MGS games are a mess, sure, and there's talk about how its not possible to be truly anti-war if your games or movies or books are fun or entertaining to read but at the same time nobody would read a book or watch a movie or play a game that was a truly miserable experience to get through, at least not enough to justify the costs of producing that. It's a fine line to walk for sure, otherwise: I didn't really gather that Big Boss was a true or misguided hero considering he just callously set up one of his men to be a fall guy and to gain public attention while he built Zanzibarland? Mercs aren't good people but I'm sure they believe they are. And yeah, Raiden has a backstory, sure, but he generally ignores it, idolizes Solid Snake, follows the orders of the colonel until..well, until reality starts collapsing down around him and at the end of the game Snake tells him to not worry so much about the words, seek deeper meaning, and decide for himself what his future is. Also, at one point he asks Rose who he is, and she says "I dont know, but we're going to find out together" because every single aspect of his life from when he got taken in by the Patriots is just constructed nonsense from AIs trying to get good at event and data manipulation. Also, when he talks about hundreds of hours of VR training, it uses footage from the VR missions pack
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Jul 12, 2023 16:33
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Raiden does well in Rising at least.
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Jul 12, 2023 16:44
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the only way to be truly anti-war is to be so dummy thicc that the clap of your rear end cheeks stops you from fighting in any battles.
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Jul 12, 2023 16:49
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Nessus posted:Raiden does well in Rising at least. I always wondered how much they disliked Kojima's philsophy because "Give War a Chance" is one hell of a thesis statement to stick to. They also managed to go goofier than Kojima somehow by having the main villain at one point fold raiden into a football and punt him
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Jul 12, 2023 16:53
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Cessna posted:I really don't like games that surprise-condemn people for playing them. That's such an insulting "gotcha." "Look how smart I am, I fooled you!" Which, yeah, you did, good for you. The wagon design is pretty similar to the design of the “cattle cars” that took Soviet soldiers to the front, so why should I even look a that and assume I’m packing Jews into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, and not that I’m packing frontoviks into passenger cars bound for Stalingrad? Gotchas like that are super vulnerable to someone just not having the same assumptions and finding the ones being forced on them contrived. moths posted:"Acceptable war crime" is on the same list as "when it's ok to use the n-word" and "perpetual motion machine" in terms of non-existent things that broke-brain white weirdos obsess over convoluting into existence. I think we should make the officers do physical labour alongside the other ranks in the POW camps and I will justify this. 
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Jul 12, 2023 17:07
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I wasn't really saying it was good, just that stuff that like already existed. Train was 2009 oh that makes sense, the indie/"serious" game journalist scene loved that sort of poo poo in 2009 or so.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:08
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Reminds me a tiny bit of Papers, Please. Of course, Papers, Please gives you agency about it, which is (one of the reasons) why it's such a great game.
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Jul 12, 2023 17:15
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